LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      After three grueling hours, the hike Roxanne Salyer had approached as a means of finding help revealed itself for what it really was: a trek into an inferno.

      She should have stayed near her car instead of taking off on foot. Not inside, but near it.

      Her car, the victim of the successful attempt to avoid running over a rabbit, was far behind her now, gobbled up by the California desert. Roxanne knew it was up to her to save herself, and if she had to do it wearing half a wilted linen suit and sandals never intended to tackle sand, then so be it.

      All in all, not an auspicious beginning to her quest.

      A niggling little voice in the back of her head balked at the word quest and inserted instead fool’s errand.

      “Oh, give it a rest,” she told that voice as she scanned miles and miles of rolling sandy hills and hazy distant mountains. Sporadic poles strung with wire announced the possibility of civilization, but it sure wasn’t visible from where she stood. No buildings, no phone booths, no nothing.

      Didn’t anyone ever drive down this blasted road?

      For the first time, fear, and not just annoyance, prickled her overheated skin. People were known to die out in the desert. It happened.

      She should have worn less impressive and more durable clothing; she should have carried more water; she should have been prepared.

      A big lump suddenly materialized in her throat. She couldn’t swallow it—she didn’t have enough saliva left. There was nothing to do but continue walking, which she did until her fried brain registered the fact that the road had split in two. One track continued in a more or less straight line, the other curved off to the west, leading to the same mountains, only closer.

      Two roads, neither looking well traveled. It was a Robert Frost nightmare.

      Her gut said the straight road was the right road but her gut didn’t have a great track record. Not today anyway. “West,” she muttered, vaguely comforted by the fact that the Pacific Ocean lay in that direction, albeit a hundred miles away.

      That’s when the strap on her left sandal snapped in two.

      She stood for a moment on her right foot, her throat as dry as the sandy earth burning through the thin sole.

      Now what?

      Jack Wheeler frowned at the sight of the white compact abandoned halfway across his access

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